Wanderers (Oneshot)
by Storychan
Summary: Crow is arrested for the first time since Kiryu's death, and uses his time in the Facility to track down the location of the isolated cell in which his friend spent his last days.


_Wanderers: A YGO 5Ds Oneshot_

By: Storychan

 _Plot: Crow is arrested for the first time since Kiryu's death, and uses his time in the Facility to track down the location of the isolated cell in which his friend spent his last days_.

He should have known better than to get caught. He'd made the run a thousand times, after all, hadn't he? Take his D-Wheel, steal the food, take it back to the hungry kids in Satellite who were depending on him. Those kids were going hungry now that he'd screwed up his little Robin Hood mission. _Shit_ , he thought as he was led away in handcuffs. _I hope they're ok until I get back._

The arrest itself didn't bother him too much. The humiliation of capture made his cheeks burn, but the whole processing routine – being thrown in the back of a Security car with his hands bound, holding for a night, then a quick sham trial and on to the prison bus – was familiar to him by now. The twin markers on his cheeks made it obvious that he was no stranger to the Facility.

When they seared the newest marker – a big "W" on his forehead – onto his flesh, it was as agonizing as all the others had been. But by now he'd learned to bite his lip to keep from screaming the way he had the first time. He shut his eyes, refusing to give the marking technician the satisfaction of seeing the pain reflected in them.

Comparatively, his first night in his cell – his new "home" for the next few months – was easy. It was comfortable, at least, and his cellmate was friendly (an old man named Yanagi – a "frequent flyer" like himself for the minimum security wing, who kept babbling enthusiastically about his cards). Crow had heard of some guys back in Satellite who got themselves arrested for some minor infraction _intentionally_ , because being in the Facility meant a guaranteed roof over your head and free food for a while, which was more than many Satellite residents had most nights. Another older man made Crow duel him to determine his "pecking order", so to speak. That, too, had been an easy task. Crow knew by now how to sneak his whole deck into the Facility with him in his shoe, and soon his dueling skills earned him the respect of the other inmates. He fit in here – perhaps too well.

But, this time, he wouldn't waste his stint in the Facility on covert duels and conversation. He had a mission he wanted to accomplish. He hadn't _wanted_ to end up here, of course, but now that he was locked up in this place, he felt compelled to find it: the solitary cell where one of his closest friends, the former leader of his beloved Team Satisfaction, Kiryu, had died a few short months ago.

It had been a punch in the gut when Jack first told him the news: Kiryu was _dead_. He'd died in the very Facility where Crow now stood. Crow wasn't sure if it had been suicide, or starvation, or disease, or if, hell, maybe one of the guards, knowing they were above the law, had just fucking killed him. Not knowing gnawed at him, in the night, and caused him nightmares that disturbed his sleep. He had to get answers, or he would never be able to overcome the grief he felt for his friend. Or the guilt.

Oh, there was so much guilt. For Crow knew that the straw that had broken the camel's back of Kiryu's sanity was the disbanding of Team Satisfaction. It was seeing the duel gang he'd given everything to create dissolve, seeing his friends abandon him, that had driven Kiryu _really_ crazy. He was sure of it. If his friends had stuck by him when the madness first began to appear, and tried to help him, then Kiryu could have been saved.

Instead, Crow had been the first to run. The first time he saw Kiryu lash out, eyes tinged with violent insanity, at a child from a rival duel gang, Crow had been _done_. It was his paternal instincts, he supposed, that made him run in the other direction when he saw Kiryu begin to go after such innocent targets. And Jack had followed him, that night – only Yusei had remained to try and salvage the jagged pieces of Kiryu's mind. Crow and Jack had left Yusei to that task _alone –_ they'd abandoned their friend in his time of need. Crow had justified it to himself, then, saying he didn't want to be anywhere near someone whose ideals and morals had drifted so far from his own. But, he should have been the one, he saw now, who understood Kiryu more than anyone. Who saw how this abandonment would crush him.

For he and Kiryu had both grown up as wanderers. Unlike Yusei and Jack, who, from birth, had been swaddled in the security of Martha's orphanage, Crow and Kiryu had both grown up drifting around Satellite, digging food out of garbage cans for sustenance, sleeping in the street, their only education the Duel Monsters cards they found in the dump. Crow had had the good fortune of being found by Yusei and Jack while he was still young and brought to Martha's. But Kiryu? He'd stayed homeless and alone until he'd met the three of them in his late teens and founded Team Satisfaction.

Team Satisfaction was the only home Kiryu had ever known. Crow knew that. He knew exactly what it meant to feel _saved_ by the hand of friendship that Yusei and Jack had extended. He knew exactly why Kiryu was so desperate to make Satellite a more satisfying place to live. After all, how many wanderer kids like them hadn't been fortunate enough to survive into adulthood? How many small, frozen bodies had they seen in the streets and thought, _That could have been me_? It was sickening. That, after all, was why Crow had begun looking after the children that the orphanages didn't have the space to take in. He didn't want any more kids to grow up the way he did. The way Kiryu did. He knew all too well the pain of being all alone, consumed with the feeling that no single other person in Satellite cared about you.

And yet he'd abandoned Kiryu anyway, made him feel like he didn't care. He'd ripped apart Kiryu's "family", betrayed his "brother". Crow had been the first thread that unraveled the once-beautiful tapestry of Kiryu's mind. If he'd just stayed…If he'd just not left Kiryu alone….If he'd just _helped_ him…..

 _No,_ Crow thought. He'd tried. He'd come back, when Yusei asked him to, and tried to save Kiryu one more time. He'd searched for him in that black night, in the pouring rain. But he'd failed again, and the next time – the _last_ time he saw Kiryu alive – he was being dragged away by Security, screaming of betrayal.

He hadn't wound up in the minimum security wing, where Crow was now being held. They wouldn't stick Kiryu with the misdemeanor crowd. No, Crow knew that Kiryu would be held in the maximum security area, the one reserved for the worst and most violent felons. He hated to think what Kiryu had endured in a place like that – locked up with murderers and rapists, committers of violent assaults and other brutalities. Even after what Kiryu did to that officer, Crow never thought his friend belonged with them.

When they let Crow out of his cell for lunch, instead of filing into the mess hall like the other inmates, he used all his skills of stealth to sneak over to _that_ wing of the Facility. He knew exactly what the guards would do to him if he was caught, but he had to risk it anyway. He had to see that place, even knowing the pain it would surely cause him. He felt he _owed_ Kiryu this. It was the closest he would ever be able to come to paying his respects – who knew, after all, where the battered body of his old friend had been buried? Crow wouldn't put it past the guards to throw him in the garbage chute with the other refuse.

After all, Satellite residents were _trash_ , right?

Crow balled his hands into fists. He couldn't think start thinking like this now. He couldn't see to find his way if his eyes were filled with tears.

He found it, somehow. He'd broken into the Security impound lot before – by comparison, even this, the most secure part of the Facility, was nothing. He drifted past cellblocks full of leering criminals until he found his aim: a long hall of solitary confinement cells. _But, which one was Kiryu's?_ he wondered.

"Hey!" a voice hissed, and Crow froze.

He exhaled in relief when he realized the voice didn't belong to a guard, but rather a prisoner whose eyes peeked out from the meal-delivery slat of the iron door of one of the cells.

"Whatchoo doin' here, man?" the voice asked intently.

Unable to come up with a believable lie, Crow decided to simply tell the truth. "I'm looking for the cell where my friend used to stay," Crow confessed, "Before….before h-he died."

"Aw hell nah," the voice tutted. "Please don' t tell me you lookin' for where they locked up that Kyosuke dude."

"It's Kiryu," Crow corrected. His friend had hated being called Kyosuke.

"Yeah, yeah, I remember 'im," the voice said. "Lemme guess: Yusei?"

"No," Crow shook his head. "My name's Crow."

"Oh yeah, he talk 'bout you, too," the voice recalled. "Or screamed, rather. I ain't never get any sleep when he here, 'cuz he always screamin' from his cell 'bout he gonna get revenge on some dudes named Yusei an' Jack an' Crow. Dat dude was mad crazy, yo."

"He was my friend," Crow defended.

"Sorry, man," the voice backtracked. "I ain't think y'all were that close no more, seein' how he was always rantin' and ravin' 'bout how bad he want to kill you. Like, damn, what did you _do_? You ruin his whole life or somethin'?"

"Yes," Crow admitted. He supposed he did.

"…..Whatever," the voice said after a moment. "Look, the dude's cell is right next door to dis one here. You go right ahead, man. It's prob'ly still unlocked. I ain't even think they cleaned it out yet."

 _Cleaned….what out yet?_ Crow wondered, but then, summoning his courage, he muttered a small thank-you to his anonymous prisoner helper and opened the door of the last place his friend had ever been.

When he entered the cell, he saw what the other man had meant: there was blood everywhere. It coated the walls, the floor, even the ceiling. _How could so much blood even come out of a person?_ Crow thought, sinking to his knees in shock. He found a small man-shaped chalk outline on the floor, the exact height and width of the friend, so young, who he had known so well. Wiping his tears on his sleeve, he crawled to the chalk and laid down in it. The bloodstain next to his wrist, as he laid in this position, looked exactly like the way blood would flow out of a body after an artery had been slashed.

 _He did this to himself,_ Crow realized, _because whatever hell he faced here was more terrifying than the thought of bleeding this much._ He felt sick as he smelled the blood of his beloved friend hanging in the air, even now.

He looked at the cold, white cinderblock wall in front of him. _This is the last thing Kiryu-kun ever saw,_ he realized, _when he laid here like this on the floor._ The floor was so cold and hard. How many months had Kiryu slept on it, freezing and starving and so very alone, before he reached that point of desperation?

Crow could imagine it. He could imagine it all too well. It wasn't so different from dying alone on some street corner of Satellite in the winter, like he'd almost done more than once before he'd been saved by the power of friendship. _A power I stripped Kiryu of,_ he thought bitterly. _Yusei-kun….Jack-kun…..we did this,_ he thought miserably. _No._ Yusei had stayed with Kiryu until the end, trying to save him from being sent to this goddawful place. And while Jack had left the same night Crow had, it had been Crow's idea to bail. Maybe that was a wanderer thing itself. Growing up having to fend for yourself constantly, it became difficult to trust or rely on anyone. So you started to think, _I'll leave first. Before they leave and hurt me._ But, Kiryu wouldn't have hurt him, Crow saw now. Even in the darkest days of madness, Kiryu had looked at Team Satisfaction with hope and trust in his eyes. Kiryu had believed, until the moment of his arrest, that his friends could save him.

"I wish I believed in you," Crow whispered, "the way you believed in me."

"I'm sorry," Crow muttered to the unfeeling, isolating walls where Kiryu had died screaming of the betrayal his friends had caused. "I'm so sorry, Kiryu," he sobbed, his tears hitting the cement floor that Kiryu had probably also sobbed upon in those last, lonely months. "I….I should have been there for you. I should have known that the thought of being alone again, l-like…..we both used to be, when we were kids, before we found our friends…I should've known that you couldn't stand the thought of going back to that lonely place. I should've known that wanderers like us gotta stick together. I'm so sorry, Kiryu-kun….I'm sorry….

I'm sorry…"


End file.
